Tag Archives: How to Talk to Kids

The bottom line of talking with your kids is to simply TALK. Start talking when they’re young, talk wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Keep talking until you’re blue in the face and one day they will listen and it will all be worth it.

As important as talking, you also need to learn when to shut up and listen. I’m learning that we all need space but especially teenagers. Sometimes they just don’t feel like talking. Sometimes it’s enough that they are sitting in the same room as you.

UNIQUE CONVERSATION STARTERS

It’s easy to say just start talking but it’s not always easy to do. Sometimes we have to find other ways to get the conversation going. Some of the comments on our post about communicating with your kids generated a collection of unique and creative ideas to kick start communication with your kids.Continue reading →

Continuing with our series on communicating with your kids, this time we’ll be talking about listening instead of talking.

LISTEN, DON’T JUDGE AND BE HONEST – GIVE THEM SPACE

And most of all, stay calm. I know our first instinct usually is to protect them from what we know is surely impending mistakes. But, especially with older children, we have to realize that they have to find their own way and we can’t always fix everything in their lives. Sometimes we just have to be there to catch them when they fall.

START THEM YOUNG

Raising kids is a time sensitive activity. You have but a few years to influence the individuals your children will grow up to be. The earlier you start doing things like communicating with them, the better. Like everything we do, we do it better when we’re used to it and we’ve been doing it a long time. When you start them young it becomes a habit to talk about anything and everything.
Continuing on our series about communicating with your kids, here are more comments from parents based on the question we asked recently, “How you keep the lines of communication open with your children as they grow older and gain more freedom?”

LEARN THEIR WORLD

Our children live in a technology driven world and it is where they are most comfortable communicating. Learn to navigate their world and you’ll be surprised at what you can learn. Here’s more comments from other parents on how they communicate with their kids using the tools that they are familiar with.Continue reading →

Continuing our series on keeping the lines of communication open with our kids, here is the third set of comments about talking to your kids…anywhere.

TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ANYWHERE

When I was young, the big thing was the ‘family meeting’. This is when the family sets time aside to all sit in the living room or the kitchen and discuss thing. It didn’t always have to be bad stuff or major things, it could be just everyday catching up things; but most of the times these ‘meetings’ come about when someone is in trouble. BIG trouble! When mom or dad says, “get everybody together. We need to talk.” You know YOU’RE IN TROUBLE!

It doesn’t have to be like that anymore. When you make it a habit to talk to your kids all the time and anywhere, then it becomes easier for them to start talking back too. For us who have busy lives, we know how important those few minutes in the car or the moments wandering the grocery aisles are.These are pockets of time when my girls and I like to catch up on what’s been going on in our day. We don’t always have time to set aside and ‘talk’ instead, we talk on the go and on the run. The great thing about this is, we develop a habit of talking so that when the big ‘sit down’ conversations come up, we are already used to talking to each other.

Sometimes all you have to do is start talking. Talk about anything and eventually something will trigger your children to open up about a subject they are concerned about but that you may not have even though to ask about. Here are more comments from our Communicate With Your Kids giveaway.Continue reading →